STATE POMOLOGICAL SOCIETY. I49 



HANDLING AMERICAN APPLES. 



Now we come to the handling of the product from this coun- 

 try. Let us begin with an auction room in the city of Hamburg. 

 I found it open, as I found other auction rooms open and the 

 visitor was not questioned when he went in. I went in and 

 made a photograph of the room. The auction of American 

 fruit with other imported fruit, whatever it may be, takes place 

 in this room daily at ten o'clock. The purchasers are the dis- 

 tributors and they send the fruit to all parts of Germany, or sell 

 it locally as the case may be. But before the fruit is sold it is 

 exhibited at the dock so that people have an opportunity of 

 knowing just the quality and grade of fruit which they are buy- 

 ing. 



This is a view in London, at that great market, Convent Gar- 

 den. There are two parts to this market, — the strictly retail 

 part and the wholesale part. The retail part is supplied by the 

 local grower and here we see a load of squashes brought in by 

 a somewhat nearby grower, although twenty miles' haul by 

 wagon is not considered a long distance in the Convent Garden 

 market. 



Women may be seen shelling peas that have been brought 

 from some local gardener. The heavy type of bushel baskets 

 are found generally in all this section. These baskets which nest 

 into each other are quite the universal type of package used by 

 vegetable growers in the Convent Garden market. 



Now we come to an auction desk within the auction room. 

 This desk represents a place where an auctioneer stands to auc- 

 tion off a consignment of fruit from a foreign country. I found 

 exceedingly agreeable men, willing to do anything for the good 

 of the cause, as they said. Just a little later I noticed a sign 

 announcing a sale at 2.30. So I came round and was able to 

 secure this scene as a lot of American Keiflfer pears were being 

 auctioned oflf. I was surprised to find them in August but I 

 couldn't get trace of the place they came from, but they must 

 have come from some point in the South where they ripen early 

 and were sent directly to the market. Now the Keiffer pear 

 was appreciated. It was uniform in size and good looking in 

 color and they were not troubling themselves about the quality. 



Now we come to the end of our story, ladies and gentlemen. 



